The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnett Read Free Book Online

up all night worrying about everything—the dream-seer stuff, facing Eli again, and worst of all, the fear of failure. It was a hard thing to live with, knowing that if I didn’t discover the killer’s identity, someone else might die.
    “You should be excited,” Selene continued, doing her best to lighten my spirits. “Just think of all the cool things you’ll be able to do with that much extra magic.”
    I rolled my eyes. “That’s half the problem. I have a hard enough time handling what I do have. Anything more and I’ll probably blow myself up.”
    “You don’t give yourself enough credit. For as little time as you’ve had to learn, you’re doing great.”
    “Yeah, sure. Tell that to your hair, why don’t you.”
    “Don’t even try that.” Selene reached behind her head and slid her long black braid over her shoulder. She picked up the end and examined it. “See. You can’t even tell it was ever singed.”
    I tapped my fork on my plate. “That’s because you’re a siren, and your magic corrects imperfections quickly.”
    Selene frowned. I had her there. At the end of gym class last Thursday, the tip of her braid looked like the top of a burnt candlewick. I hadn’t meant to set her hair on fire, but we’d been studying combative magic that day. Well, we studied it most days. Sure, we did the usual stuff like sit-ups and dodgeball, but our classes more often resembled paintball games or laser tag, only with spells instead of toy guns. Before The Will, people learned combative magic to survive, given all the magickind-on-magickind violence. Now we learned it for sport.
    Selene tossed her braid back behind her shoulder. “Accidents happen. Besides, that capture the flag game was intense. I saw loads of people come out of it beat up.”
    “Sure. Only how many of them were injured by their own teammates?”
    Selene shrugged as if this didn’t matter. Then a grin spread across her face. Even without makeup she was stunningly beautiful. “It’s not always so bad when your magic goes awry. I think we can count the Katarina snake incident as a total win.”
    I couldn’t help it. I grinned, too.
    “See, your day’s getting brighter already,” said Selene.
    “Yep. Somebody get me some shades.” I shoved a forkful of eggs into my mouth, still nervous but trying to put a good face on it for my friend’s sake.
    Selene took a dainty sip of her hot chocolate, the action so at odds with her tough-girl, tomboy appearance. She sported the combat-boot-and-army-pants ensemble today. She looked tired and her violet eyes were thoughtful. It seemed she was now falling victim to her own bad mood. I knew she hadn’t slept well, either. Some of it was no doubt my restlessness in the bed opposite hers, but I suspected most of it had to do with Rosemary. Selene used to hang with the same “in” crowd as the consul’s daughter before she launched her sirens-are-more-than-sex-objects social protest. I didn’t think they’d been close friends or anything, but friendly enough.
    “You know,” whispered Selene, “you should ask Melanie about Rosemary’s ring.”
    “Who?”
    “Melanie Remillard. She and Rose were best friends.” Selene dropped her voice even lower. “I bet if Rose told anybody about this Keeper business, it was her.”
    “Sure, okay. Do you see her anywhere?” I scanned the crowd, which was kind of pointless since I had no idea what Melanie looked like, and she was most likely an upperclassman and wouldn’t be eating in this cafeteria in the first place.
    “She hasn’t been in school since it happened.”
    “Oh,” I said, unsurprised. If someone killed my best friend, I’d probably go into social hibernation as well. I’d be devastated to lose Selene.
    “But how did they do it?” Selene rapped her knuckles on the table. “How’d they get around The Will?”
    I prodded an apple slice on my plate with the tines of my fork. “Maybe it’s not as hard as they say.”
    “I dunno.